1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to a printing control method, a printing control terminal device and an image forming apparatus. More particularly, the present general inventive concept relates to a printing control method to convert a page of an XML paper specification (XPS) file having settings which require processing using many resources by an image forming apparatus, into page description language (PDL) data. The present general inventive concept also relates a printing control terminal device and image forming apparatus using the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Image forming apparatuses generally print print data generated by terminal devices, such as computers, onto recording media. Examples of such image forming apparatuses include copiers, printers, facsimile machines or multifunction peripherals (MFPs) which combine functions of copiers, printers and facsimile machines into a single system.
Image forming apparatuses which have been widely used in recent years have XPS emulators so as to support a function of printing XPS files, in addition to a conventional function of printing print data written in a page description language (PDL), such as postscript (PS) or printer command language (PCL).
An XPS file has a fixed-layout electronic file format that preserves document formatting and can be shared, and refers to a zip-formatted file which includes all kinds of data and resources described by systematizing all resources required for documents or operations in a directory structure and by writing the references therebetween in XML. Such an XPS file has a logical structure in the form of a tree having a plurality of levels, as illustrated in FIG. 6.
Referring to FIG. 6, an XPS file is represented with a job level 10, a document level 20 and a page level 30 located in a hierarchical branching structure. The document level 20 includes a plurality of documents, and the page level 30 includes a plurality of pages. Different print options may be set to each of the plurality of documents and to each of the plurality of pages.
However, when processing an XPS file, an image forming apparatus requires greater resources when compared with a situation when processing data written in PDL. For example, if an XPS file contains transparency, an image forming apparatus may require greater resources in order to print the XPS file, thereby increasing the likelihood that problems may arise during printing.